Californians ‘hunkering down’ in Puerto Vallarta after cartel violence

Craig Chamberlain planned to have a delightful breakfast with his wife at Los Muertos beach in Puerto Vallarta. However, as they were heading towards the city, they decided to turn back when they saw clouds of smoke rising from the heart of the town.

About a minute later, they were stopped on the road Sunday and an armed man wearing a black mask advanced towards the window of their Kia Sorento, shouting in Spanish.

“He was very excited and nervous,” said Chamberlain, a Newport Beach resident who spends half the year in the bustling beach town in the Mexican state of Jalisco.

“When someone points a gun at your face, you don’t actually want to fight back too much,” he added. “It took us a minute to understand what he was saying. We didn’t know if he wanted us to pull over or keep moving. Eventually we realized he had taken our car.”

U.S. tourists and expats in Mexico were advised to shelter in place Sunday as cartel violence gripped several beach resorts. Mexican security forces killed Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera CervantesMexico’s most wanted drug trafficker.

In retaliation, gunmen set fire to cars and buses and blocked highways in western Mexico. By late Sunday, chaos had spread to eastern Mexico’s popular resort towns of Cancun, Cozumel, Playa del Carmen and Tulum.

For many Californians in Puerto Vallarta, a tourist magnet known as one of Mexico’s safest cities, the experience was jarring.

After the carjacking, Chamberlain and his wife walked to a restaurant a few blocks away to consider their next move. The restaurant owner let a few people in and then barricaded the doors.

The couple met with 15 people, including a man in his 80s and a mother with her 1-year-old daughter. From the restaurant’s terrace, they watched fires break out all over the city.

At one point, a group of men drove a car within about 200 feet of the restaurant, doused it with gasoline and set it on fire.

“This mother was walking her little baby back and forth on the porch, teaching him to walk,” Chamberlain said, “and giggled as the car burned.”

As of Monday, the situation had returned to normal in many parts of the country, the U.S. Embassy and Consulates said in an updated report. security warning. However, US citizens were still urged to shelter in Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara, Ciudad Guzman, Tijuana Chiapas and Michoacan.

Palm Springs actor and writer Wesley Eure, who plays Michael Horton on the American soap opera Days of Our Lives, spent Sunday sitting at home after noticing a slight puff of smoke outside his window.

The smoke grew larger and darker until it turned into a thick black column that seemed to engulf the blue sky. Then more fires broke out blocks away.

Eure, who lives on the Mexican coast six months of the year, said his local pharmacy was burned and looted. A bus with a propane tank was set on fire and exploded, sending flames into the building where his bank and gym were located. Her Mexican landlord insisted she not leave her two-bedroom apartment.

“It looked like all hell had broken loose in Puerto Vallarta,” Eure told The Times on Monday.

Many tourists were stranded.

Katy Holloman, a makeup artist from El Dorado Hills, was supposed to return home from vacation in Puerto Vallarta on Sunday when hotel staff told her everyone was sheltering in place.

He booked a flight for Monday, but that flight was also canceled. “At this point,” he said on Facebook video“I really hope we can get home safely very, very soon.”

The Chamberlains considered themselves lucky. The restaurant staff offered them a free lunch; This, Chamberlain said, was a typical gesture in Mexico.

“It’s a nice place with mostly really nice people,” he said. “It’s interesting that even these bad guys, if you want to call them that, are pretty careful not to hurt people.”

The couple then left the restaurant and walked to a nearby hotel a few blocks away. They hoped to return to their home next to the marina tomorrow if things remained calm.

Much of the violence that gripped the town calmed down on Monday: the hollow shells of burnt cars and buses were cleared from the roads and airports reopened to domestic travel.

But there was still no public transport, meaning some employees couldn’t get to work, so businesses remained closed.

Some longtime Puerto Vallarta residents took it easy.

Elizabeth Shanahan, a California immigrant who moved to Puerto Vallarta from Newport Beach two decades ago, said television news made it seem as if buildings across the city had been swallowed. But the damage it sustained was mostly focused on buses and cars.

“They don’t want to harm civilians…” he said. “And indeed it does not appear that civilians of any nationality are excluded.”

Shanahan, who runs a business that provides professional yacht services, said his clients have no fears about being in Mexico. He was advising some wealthy clients not to enter the city in their luxury vehicles and to be careful in any unfamiliar place.

“The truth is,” he said, “I feel safer here right now than I do in Minneapolis.”

Until this weekend, Eure had never felt safe in Puerto Vallarta.

But after hiding in her apartment 90 steps from the beach in the historic Zona Romantica on Sunday, Eure was ready to come out. He hadn’t been to the store in a few days, and he and his friend were tired of going through old cereal boxes. He had received news that one of the Oxxo markets had become operational.

On Monday morning, he and his friend went out.

“It was like ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ like stepping into a colorful world,” he said. “It was beautiful.”

The sun was out. Their neighbors were sitting on the porch. On maleconOn the town’s oceanfront boardwalk, locals were jogging and walking their dogs.

“Everyone was saying, ‘Everything is fine, don’t worry,'” he said. “Everyone is trying to reassure each other.”

A friend directed him to an outdoor restaurant where he had a salmon bagel.

However, long queues formed in the markets. When they drove inland, a few blocks from the beach, they found burned-out apartment buildings and stores surrounded by red “Peligro” or hazard warning tape.

Still, even amid the devastation, everyone remained calm, orderly and friendly, he said.

Learning that there was no food in the apartment, a female friend invited her and her friend to her oceanfront home for a dinner of pork chops and stuffed portobello mushrooms.

“This is a very tight community,” Eure said, “I’m hoping things will go back to the way they were.”